Kids do the Darndest Things

Thursday was just one of those days where explaining the concept of "fairness" to 2nd graders was the easiest part of the day. Most of my day was taken up with meetings. The first meeting was with IT trying to get me limited admin rights. Unfortunately my technical background is fairly nonexistent and they are running in some new programs, so that was denied. As a consolation prize I might be able to get some in depth training with IT at some point/ be their guinea pig, but it was still a bit of a let down. Then I was trying to wrangle printing companies into giving me quotes for how much it would cost to get 500 flyers printed for our e-waste booth at Cinqo de Mayo. Only a handful have answered me so far which is fairly annoying.

Then we had open lab, the time of week that I always look forward to with joy. Tons of kids, teens and adults all in the same room demanding computers. I've managed to deal with this type of situation well, but the formula gets complicated when we introduce the concept of returners. Basically I will allow kids to reup their time by doing math games, and if they beat a math game they also get a cookie. This has been a wildly popular program, as you may be able tell, and I had 5 kids trying to get back into the lab for about an hour. All in all this combined to make the entire experience a... special one.

Some highlights from the lab:
- a kindergartner (who is too young by one year to get into the lab) attempting to forge a pass from the homework center so he would appear to be a first grader
- explaining how my policies are actually fair to 2nd graders, then getting complained at because it wasn't fair in their direction
- two kids making a huge poster in the middle of the lab, creating an island people had to walk around but that I couldn't get rid of because it was the first time I had definitely seen them do work all year
- a 1st grader singing "I wanna make love right naw naw naw" over and over again
- two other kindergartners wandering into the lab at 10 minute intervals asking "Is the computer lab open? Can kids come in?" and forgetting my answer every time
- an in depth discussion on iron on shirt designs with one of the teens

Until next time...

"The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know because I have tested it."
- Autobiography of Mark Twain